Series: Fort Smith Woman A Music Enthusiast, Reported Missing In 1982

Editor’s Note: The Times Record today continues a weeklong series of reports looking at unsolved missing persons cases at the Fort Smith Police Department. Wednesday: Mother missing since 1985.

Figuring out what happened to Linda Louellen “Lindy” Reynolds has proven difficult because she had a lot of friends, her disappearance predates any social media footprint and the club she once frequented no longer exists.

Although the case is more than 30 years old, the Fort Smith Police Department has not given up on trying to find Reynolds, who was 30 years old when she disappeared.

Reynolds was last seen May 17, 1982, after she went to a club in Oklahoma.

“She was a rock-band enthusiast,” said Cpl. Patricia Sullivan of the Fort Smith Police Department. “Any type of bars like that that had a rock band, she would frequent.”

Sometime during the night, Reynolds drove to her parents’ home in Fort Smith, where she also lived, and left them a note saying that she was staying with friends and that she would be back in time for work at 5 p.m. She didn’t return, and three days later her parents reported her missing.

“From there, we followed every lead that came up,” said detective Brandon Lowdermilk, who has been assigned the case. “People that knew her — they collected all of her personal materials, like notebooks, her things, her letters, and tried to contact as many people as they could that she knew or that her parents knew.”

When Lowdermilk first got the case, he pored over pages and pages of case files, trying to find anything that needed a follow-up or something any of the previous detectives assigned to the case might have missed.

“This case predates any kind of digital archive or anything, so it’s all paper,” he said. “It takes up pretty much a whole cabinet in our (CID) area down there.”

There wasn’t much to go on. Reynolds’ dental records are on file at the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory in Little Rock, and DNA evidence collected from family members hasn’t yielded definitive results, Lowdermilk said.

Because the club that Reynolds frequented was near the Oklahoma/Arkansas border, officials on both sides have worked in tandem over the years to piece together a picture of what might have happened the night she disappeared. The club has since closed.

Lowdermilk said he recently came upon something that might lead to new information in the case, but that he could not discuss it.

“I’ve got one (lead) that I’m working with,” he said. “It’s one of those things where it’s a slight possibility.”

Sgt. Poncho Davis, who heads the Criminal Investigation Division, said he knew Reynolds.

“We weren’t really close friends or anything — like we’d hang out or anything — but I knew her from classes,” Davis said. “I did go to the club some when I was much younger, so I knew her from there.”

Davis went to high school with Reynolds and became a detective in 1982, around the time Reynolds was reported missing.

Although he was not assigned the case, Davis said he provided the detectives working at the time some insight into the people Reynolds used to hang around and the places she would go.

An adult certainly has the right to go someplace and not return home, but what gave rise to suspicion in Reynolds’ case was that she never seemed to try to reach out to anyone after she left, Lowdermilk said.

“(The detectives) talked to so many different people — family, friends, people that kind of knew her, people that saw her just from going to where one band was playing,” he said. “If she had left with a band member, and everything was OK, then we wouldn’t be working this case since ’82.”

Anyone with information on the disappearance of Lindy Reynolds can call the Fort Smith Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division at (479) 709-5116, or email missingpersons@fortsmithpd.org.